The dynamics of social, cultural, human, and economic capital in food insecurity among the forced migrants

Abstract

Food insecurity signifies limited access, expertise, and capacity to affordable safe food. Food insecurity creates different experiences in the daily lives of people worldwide. Food insecurity is common among forced migrants due to changes in cultural norms, space, politics, and economies. While it is readily apparent that forced migration is associated with food insecurity, the details of how the changes in their social, cultural, human, and financial capital affect their food security are not well understood. This matters for finding ways to address food insecurity for those who are, forced to migrate to help improve their food across the migration trajectory. The objectives of the study are to find out how social capital improves the migrant's sources of livelihood and ensures their food security before the violent crisis. Find out how they lost the capital and the implications for food security. Find out the efforts made by forced migrants during and after migrations to ensure food security. This article draws on twenty-five (25) in-depth narrative interviews with people who had experienced conflict-induced migration in Nigeria to address this gap. Their responses were audio recorded and subsequently transcribed and written in English. The contextual data was, subjected to computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (CAQDAS), and the data analyzed. Analysis of this data provides critical insight for explaining and addressing the dynamic relationship between social, cultural, human, and economic capital and food insecurity experienced by forced migrants. It revealed that social, cultural, human, and economic (financial) capitals are significant factors shaping the participant’s livelihood sources before and after the crisis.